Research Toolbox

Friday, January 28, 2011

Blog "2" Book with Blog2Print ~ Post #2

I sure raised a lot of questions with my blog post regarding Blog2Print! Wow! I decided there were enough questions to warrant another blog post on this subject instead of trying to answer everyone's questions individually. I just hope I can answer them all for you!

Before I go any further though, I would like to say that I have no affiliation what so ever with the Blog2Print company. I just happened to choose this company to print my blog.

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The Blog2Print home page has a section where you can actually page through a book. You can see pictures added, comments and other text. You can choose which cover you would like, what color, and what you would like to print, maybe your Facebook pages, your blog, Twitter pages, or Picassa, etc. If you choose to make the book of your blog, Blog2Print will ask you what blog platform you use, Blogger, Word Press or TypePad. You choose the title of the book and can make a dedication page. They make the process very simple! ****** Update! Upon Looking at the site tonight (1/28/2011) ~ Facebook, Twitter, Picassa, PDF and Word content is printed througheverything2print.com!!!!

"Can you pick out certain posts when making the book?" You can choose labels, more than one at a time and those labeled items will only be pulled for the book. You can choose date ranges only, or labels and date ranges. You can choose everything and delete what you don't want. There are different ways to go about it, but I think you could choose just those posts you want to print by using labels.

How is the paper? Acid Free?The paper is nice and thick, good quality to me. There is a comment on their home page from another blogger stating she was impressed with the paper and quality of the pictures, and I tend to agree. As far as being acid free, I have not seen anything stating that, so I doubt that any of it is.

Can you keep a copy of your book on your own hard drive or is it uploaded to their server?All of the information you choose is uploaded to their site.

Can you print it out on your own home computer?No, because it is uploaded to their site. You can however order a download of it for a nominal fee.

Was it easy to edit?Truthfully, I didn't edit a thing. I wanted it just as it on my blog. I am not sure that you can edit the text, I doubt it, but I could be wrong. As far as adding the pictures or comments etc, that is just a matter of checking the correct box.

How big did the pages turn out? Can you choose the size?The pages are 8 1/2 X 11 and I don't remember seeing where you could change the size of the pages.

These were all excellent questions. I do not profess to know it all about Blog2Print, but I answered these questions to the best of my knowledge. I can see where some of these questions were leading. I do not think this is the answer for everyone's projects. There are definite limitations. For me, and my purpose, which was to save a copy of my blog, I am very pleased. If you are wanting to publish your genealogy, this may not be the route for you.

Blurb has been mentioned in the comments of the last post. I am not familiar with Blurb, so I can not compare. You will notice though in the comments of the last post, Brenda from Journey to the Past checked out Blurb and chose Blog2Print.

I hope I have answered your questions, thank you all for your comments and questions on my last post.

8 comments:

I'm not surprised you were inundated with questions. Last year I blogged about Blurb books, and I had a record number of comments and ended up with at least three posts on the subject. I'd love to try one of your Blog2Books just to compare. I print out a blog book every three months, and they are about 120 pages each time.

Thanks Cheryl for answering these questions...very helpful information. I'm curious though, in reading the comments to this post, why Barbara Poole would want to print out a book with no surnames? To me the purpose of printing the book is to give it to relatives who may pass it down

Cheryl thanks for all the information. I would really like to do a book for each of surnames.Hope to have time someday!I have a question - do you know anything about printing a book from your Facebook photo albums?I uploaded pictures from my husband's family from a family reunion. We don't know some of the people and I have been trying to get some of the family on Facebook to help. They have left comments with some of the names. It would be great if there was a site where I could make a book or a CD of the pictures and the comments with the names. Do you know of anything like this? Thanks for any help you can give.

Cheryl,Thanks for these. I've had Blurb and Blog2Print on my radar for a couple of years now. Both have gotten MUCH better - easier to use and many more options. Looks like it is time to create some hard cover copies of the CGSL blog to put on the shelf at the library.

Hi Cheryl,Very informative post. I will have to check out Blog2Print. I had checked out Blurb but didn't do anything with it that was for my quilting blog. Genealogy is far more important to save. Thanks for sharing and doing more investigating. Mary in AZ

Cheryl, thanks for posting about your experience with Blog2Print. Like Heather, I've posted about my experiences using Blurb and also had a huge number of comments. I think so many of our fellow geneablogging friends are interested in making books, and it's great to know what others have to say about the print-on-demand services they've tried.